Hot Consort

When this is your wife, it certainly is "good to be the king".

"She's the kind of woman you'd expect to see as the beautiful consort to the corrupt generalissimo of a collapsing Third World country."

—Good Omens, on War

Power Is Sexy. But nothing says the sexy part has to be one-sided.

When you rule a country, you have a choice of pretty much anyone you want to be your spouse. Not to mention that if power tends to corrupt, alongside being sexy, then women are often attracted to such corruption anyway.

Has some overlap with Ugly Guy, Hot Wife, but the King (or Queen) can be hot too. Must be married to them, or something close enough for tax purposes. Also applies to elected Presidents, powerful Prime Ministers and all round tyrants.

Note: being hot is not a guarantee against the husband having a mistress.

See also Dark Mistress.

Examples of Hot Consort include:

Anime and Manga

• Emperor Daibazaal of GoLion had a concubine who looked a lot like Princess Fala. Unfortunately, he ends up having her killed.
• All the male love interests in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, although, in the manga, Hanon and Rina acknowledge that they'll have to leave their human boyfriends to rule their countries rather than have both.
• Marianne of Code Geass.

Film

• Rupert Friend as Prince Albert in The Young Victoria.
• Buttercup in The Princess Bride, even if she never actually got to be Queen and it was all a publicity stunt.

Literature

• Arwen of Lord of the Rings.
• Guinevere of the King Arthur legends.
• In Dune, Paul marries the emperor's daughter, but also has Chani, who is basically his wife in everything but name.
  • Paul's mother Jessica is this to her husband Leto. Her looks aren't the only reason for this, though.
• In The Wheel of Time, Rand al'Thor ends up in a polygamous relationship with three super-hot women - Elayne, Aviendha and Min - as his wives/consorts. It's good to be the Dragon Reborn. Well, not really, but there are perks to it.
  • Faile to Perrin.
  • Nynaeve (who'd have thought!?) to Lan.
  • On the male side, Mat is this to Tuon.
  • So is Gawyn to Egwene.
  • Lews Therin Telamon, Dragon Reborn and Lord of Morning, rejected Lanfear (one of the most beautiful and powerful, though completely egomaniacal, women of the Age of Legends) for Ilyena (equally beautiful and not about to go over to the Shadow because she's a jealous bitch). Naturally, Lanfear is a little resentful. Even more delusional, but hey, that's why Lews Therin didn't stick it in the crazy.
  • Numerous more-mundane examples from amongst the royalty.
• Laisa in the Vorkosigan Saga.
• Voyaging Moon ("Precious Consort") in The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen.
• Buttercup in The Princess Bride. Humperdinck sought out the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife, and got her.
• Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights
• Esther in The Bible.
  • Also, the former queen that Esther replaced, Queen Vashti
• In Diana Wynne Jones' book Deep Secret, the protagonist meets High Lady Alexandra, one of the least important consorts to an emperor with dozens of wives and mistresses. Given how beautiful and intelligent she is, he speculates that after all his political marriages were accomplished he started picking ones like her for his own amusement.
• Cersei Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire.
• In The Royal Diaries book Elisabeth, The Princess Bride the Emperor defied his mother in his choice of who to marry because of Elisabeth's beauty and spirited nature.

Live Action TV

• In Stargate: Continuum, in the changed timeline, Baal has Qet'esh as his Queen. Qet'esh being Vala with a Goa'uld in her.
  • Not that she's satisfied with being just a consort...
  • The Stargate SG-1 series begins with Apophis raiding Earth and Abydos, looking for beautiful women he can implant with his queen Goa'uld.
• In Doctor Who, when the Master takes over Earth in "The Last of the Time Lords", he has a sexy wife. Who shoots him dead.
  • And then sabotages his resurrection.
• Anne Boleyn on The Tudors.
• In Chuck, Costa Gravas is a Banana Republic ruled by the Communist Premier Allejandro Goya after a coup in the 70s. His wife is shown to be a hot Spicy Latina. Subverted in that they were together even before the coup. After she attempts to overthrow him due to their marriage going sour, they reconcile, and he makes her Secretary of State.
• In Blackadder Back and Forth, King Edmund III is married to gorgeous Maid Marian. Lampshaded in the ending theme: "At last, a king who looks the part/ At last, a queen who looks good naked".
• Looks like Blair is going to be one in Gossip Girl, though it's anyone's guess if she'll actually go through with the marriage.
• Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones.
  • Also Margaery Tyrell. Incidentally, played by Natalie Dormer, who also played the aforementioned Anne Boleyn on The Tudors.
• As of series 4 of Merlin, Guinevere has become Arthur's Queen Consort.

Video Games

• Some of the endings to the Princess Maker games have her being a consort in some way. To either the Dirty Old Man King, the much younger Prince... or Lucifon the King of Hell.
• Depending on your choices at the Landsmeet, the player can become one of these in Dragon Age. Or, depending of the gender, have one. Or two, if he plays his cards right.

Western Animation

• Three of the Disney Princesses: Cinderella, Belle and Tiana. Male examples include Aladdin, Flynn, and Milo, especially that in the case of the last one mentioned, rather than becoming a prince he actually goes straight to becoming a king (the princess he married at the end of his film was already a queen by the time of their marriage).
  • And of course in the case of the animal kingdom, there's also Robin Hood, Sarabi, Nala, and Kovu.
• Princess Ursa of Avatar: The Last Airbender. She never did get to be Fire Lady, though, since she was banished before Fire Lord Ozai's coronation for assassinating the previous Fire Lord and therefore putting Ozai on the throne.

Real Life

• Marie Antoinette, especially in fictional depictions of her.
  • Especially Norma Shearer in the 1930's, Michele Morgan (with her mesmeric blue eyes) in the 1950's, and Kirsten Dunst in 2006.
• Carla Bruni, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy. (She was already a sex symbol, being a well-known fashion model and singer, previous to her marriage.)
• Queen Rania of Jordan and the former Queen Noor.
  • Queen Rania is so stunningly gorgeous, in fact, that The Onion's Our Dumb World atlas - which spends its time mocking every single country in the world - instead spends the entirety of Jordan's entry gushing over her and wondering where they can find someone like that.
    • Palestine, although Queen Rania is Palestinian via Kuwait. Yeah, women from the Levant are up there. It was a good political match, too: over 50% of Jordanians are actually Palestinian.
• Jackie Kennedy
• Dolley Madison
• Some of Henry VIII's wives. At least Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
  • Anne of Cleves was an interesting example---she was from an important Protestant family as it was, but Henry made his final decision to marry her only after having an official portrait done and brought for him to judge. The problem was, the artist purposefully painted her without her pockmarks (as was usual at the time), so Henry apparently got upset when he saw her, never consummated the marriage and had it annulled six months later.
  • Anne Boleyn wasn't considered beautiful by various foreign ambassadors, but she was very clever and vivacious. Katarine of Aragon, the one Henry left, was the most beautiful princess of Europe in her youth. And Anne of Cleves was described as prettier then Catharine Parr and Jane Seymour, Henry just couldn't stand her because she'd mistaken him for a servant when he visited her for the first time unannounced.
• Byzantine Emperors had a habit, during the heyday of the Empire, of picking the Empress from beauty shows. I kid you not - examples include the lovely and talented Empress Theodora, wife to Emperor Justinian I (she started her adult life as a prostitute), and several subsequent Empress-Consorts.
  • That custom was also known among many oriental countries. It sounds more appropriate for polygamy where the husband doesn't have to worry about whether he actually likes his wife as a person instead of as a hobby because he can always try another wife for that purpose.
• Mary Queen of Scots, during her brief stint as Queen-Consort of France.
• Subverted by Charles, Prince of Wales who chose Camilla Parker-Bowles over Princess Diana.
  • More or less Justified Trope, as they were lovers for quite a while before Diana ever was into the picture. In fact, if not for the detail that Camilla wasn't a virgin and married to somebody else, she would've possibly been Princess of Wales.
  • Also, from reliable reports, Camilla is much more attractive in person than her photographs would indicate. Some people just don't give good photo, so to speak.
• Grace Kelly, wife of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco.
• Dictators generally don't have any problems fulfilling the trope requirements. Combining All Girls Want Bad Boys with the ultimate alpha male power has ...disturbing consequences to one's faith in humanity.
• Famous Gender Flipped example: Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, consort of Good Queen Vicky.
• Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (formerly Kate Middleton), wife of Prince William (who is second in line to the British throne - and no slouch himself).
• Believe or not, but William's grandfather Prince Phillip was once rather dashing. Particularly in that Royal Navy uniform of his (which he earned, thank you very much).
• Judith of Bavaria, queen-consort to Louis, King of the Franks.
• Letizia, Princess of Asturias, wife of Felipe, prince of Asturias, and future Queen of Spain.
• Margaret Trudeau, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
• Melania Trump wife of American real estate magnate Donald Trump is a Slovenian model and an American socialite.
• Barack Obama's wife Michelle.